Had a few problems in first practice, losing the data on his display in the car and later experiencing a hydraulic leak.

His unbeaten run in qualifying at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve came to an end on Saturday as he could only manage fifth. He said his seventh gear was “a bit too long for qualifying”.

He showed strong pace in the seven laps his race lasted for, but the same ragged edge that had been evident in Monaco was still visible.

First there was contact with Mark Webber – Hamilton said: “I touched Mark?ů‘ťľ‘šůs car after he braked a bit early into the first corner. He left me enough room, but I touched the inside kerb and understeered into him”.

That dropped him behind Michael Schumacher, who Hamilton tried to pass at the Casino hairpin but ended up running wide and letting Button pass.

Button made a mistake at the exit of the final chicane and Hamilton lined him up to try to pass.

He tried to move to Button’s left, and claim the inside line for turn one. But Button didn’t see his team mate coming and the pair made contact, Hamilton also striking the pit wall. They were fortunate that neither car flipped into the air, and that the terminal damage was limited to just Hamilton’s car.

The stewards have investigated the actions of the driver of car three (L. Hamilton) after his collision with car four (J. Button) in particular the matter of where he stopped his car.

Having heard from the driver and the team representative, the stewards have concluded that the driver was convinced he only had a flat tyre. This was subsequently confirmed by the team representative to be correct.

The driver therefore believed he could safely return to the pits and proceeded to attempt to do so.

However at the time, his team believed the car had sustained suspension damage and radioed him to stop immediately. The driver reacted accordingly and stopped within six seconds at a marked vehicle recovery point.

Said he “overdrove” his qualifying lap which put him seventh on the grid.

Butt picked up damage in the collision with Hamilton and had to pit for repairs, during which he also took the opportunity to switch to intermediate tyres. On top of that he was handed a drive-through penalty for speeding during the safety car period.

He made his way back to to tenth when the race was suspended. After the restart he did one lap then came in for intermediate tyres.

He took advantage of Adrian Sutil and Jarno Trulli running wide at the hairpin to pass both of them, then found Fernando Alonso coming out of the pits in front of him.

The pair tangled in turn three and Alonso came off worse but Button ended up limping back to the pits with a puncture.

Fortunately for him the safety car came out again and he was able to catch up to the field just in time for the restart on lap 41.

Now the last running car on the track, Button picked off the HRTs, Virgins and Lotuses with ease and was swiftly up to 12th place.

He switched to slick tyres on lap 51 and was instantly able to lap quicker on them than those around him, possibly thanks to the higher downforce wings on his McLaren helping him generate more heat in the tyres.

Webber, who had pitted for slicks one lap earlier, set a new fastest lap of 1’24.6 -on the next lap Button was 1.7 seconds faster.

Button jumped past several cars who scampered into the pits for slicks and rapidly overtook those remaining on the track in front of him. When the safety car came out for the final time he was up to fourth.

After the final restart Button picked off Webber who went wide in the final chicane. He dealt with Schumacher easily on lap 65, flying past the Mercedes using his DRS.

With four laps to go Button was 1.6 seconds behind Vettel and storming towards an incredible upset. Vettel gave it everything he had and stemmed the loss of time to Button to a few tenths of a second per lap.

But by the penultimate tour Button was within the DRS zone and the pair started the final lap less than a second apart. When Vettel skidded at turn six the lead of the race – and a stunning victory – fell into Button’s lap.

“It felt like I spent more time in the pits than on the pit-straights,” he said. “The guys did a great job of calling the strategy.

“At some points we definitely lucked out on the strategy, especially when the red flag came out but we called it very well going to slicks”.

He added the race was “one of those Grands Prix where you are nowhere, then you?ů‘ťľ‘šůre somewhere, then you?ů‘ťľ‘šůre nowhere and then you?ů‘ťľ‘šůre somewhere.

“As we always say the last lap is the important one to be leading and I was leading half of it. Amazing day”.

Sort of reminds me of Senna 1993 at Donnington. Didnt matter how many pit stops you made, for as long as you were on the right tyre at the right time for the conditions. Button nailed it, and probably would have to in Monaco if not for the silly regulations which allowed Alonso and Vettel to change tyres.

Sort of reminds me of Senna 1993 at Donnington. Didnt matter how many pit stops you made, for as long as you were on the right tyre at the right time for the conditions.

If anything, Senna spent less time on the “right tyres” at that race than anyone else. The conditions in that race changed so quickly that anyone on the right tyres at the right time lost masses of time in the pits.

It was Senna‚Äôs ability to maintain his pace on the wrong tyres which won him the race. He tried a similar tactic at Spa the previous year but it didn‚Äôt work.

Senna made four stops during that race, whereas Prost made seven stops. Senna stayed out on slicks during a passing shower, while Prost and Hill pitted for wets and shortly afterwards had to pit to switch back to slicks.

It doesn’t really matter now and I do agree that to win, first you have to finish but I just can imagine what pace HAM had if he was just a bit more patient. A real shame since both McLarens could have done 1-2…

But that’s probably his destiny: some time ago lost to RAI a championship that was in his hands, now wasted some 30 points to VET just because of mentality. Probably the fastest driver now in the grid but really doesn’t have the mentality of a champion :(

A great drive and a drive through penalty and he still won,JB is made for these conditions,he has the patience to wait his chance,the incident with Lewis was 50-50 for me.
Lewis must stop trying to overtake everyone in the first 10 laps,whatever he tries lately is not coming off,by all means attack and overtake,but his eagerness to pass is not doing him any favours,and the stewards do have his card well and truly marked,and and anytime soon an over zealous steward will try to get him banned.

Just looking at this season, I feel like this was coming. In Turkey and China, Lewis had to really make some fraught moves to get around Button, who was holding him up, and those easily could have ended in tears too. Also go back to Turkey last year when they went wheel to wheel in a very dangerous battle. Basically, whenever Button gets ahead of Hamilton in the race, it’s dangerous, because the latter is likely to be quicker, but only just, and Hamilton don’t like to wait. Generally, as McLaren want their guys to race, there are going to be “racing incidents.” McLaren have only escaped yesterday’s result that far because the two guys are uncommonly skilled and have been lucky, but it had to happen at some point.

I don’t think Hamilton was too eager at all. Button made a clear mistake into the last corner and that cost him, Hamilton saw his chance and was clearly much quicker down the pit straight then Button. Any driver had dived for that opportunity, maybe only Heidfeld had held back, but any of the really good drivers had gone for that one.
It is very easy to look at it in hindsight and see that it of cause is obvious that Button is not going to see him coming, and is going to go so wide through that right hand kink that Hamilton ends up in the wall, but from on board Hamilton’s car it is such an obvious opportunity and he goes for the outside to gain the inside into the first corner. Seems pretty logical.
What if Hamilton had dived for the inside of the kink and Button had kept the racing line into the first corner? Button would still have turned in on Hamilton because that is the line into the first corner.
He is a racer, and he got the opportunity he needed to make the move, he just didn’t get the space.

Well, viewed from Hamilton’s onboard its clear that by the time he attempts the move he’s had to take to the grass in order to do so which in the wet is wreckless. Right up to the point that the cars connected Hamilton had the opportunity to exercise some circumspection, lift a little and live to fight another day. This he failed to do which resulted in the avoidable racing incident we saw. Hamilton needs to address this impatient streak because it’s depriving us of his spectacular driving.

Well done to JB, another superb job in difficult conditions and a thoroughly enjoyable race, eventually.

Disagree – he starts to make the move very early after exiting the corner – there was still plenty of room he was on the track with all 4 wheels alongside Button. The reason he didn’t pull out of it was he thought that Button knew he was there and was just squeezing him.

If you get Hamilton going for an overtake and then pulling out when the other car squeezes him towards the grass/wall you will just start complaining that he’s rubbish at overtakes and has no courage. Just look at the Schumi/Barrichello incident in Hungary last year – a great overtake from Rubens against an over aggressive defender because he kept his foot in it. Yes in this case he should have twigged that Button might not see him but it’s not a horribly obvious miscalculation…

As all the camera shots show clearly, Hamilton never got his front wheels further forward than contact with Button’s rear wheels, because if he had been further up, his hard bounce off the pit wall would have ended both their races. Spectacularly. Even as it was, only Button’s lightning fast reactions were all that kept him pointing in the right direction. And as for Button squeezing Hamilton out, all Button was doing was following exactly the diagonal drying line of all the cars in front of him.

Even if Button had been in the least aware of the position Hamilton took ( and in those conditions I very much doubt he had the slightest idea precisely where Hamilton’s car was ) it would have been suicidal to abandon the drying line.

Hamilton is a stunningly fast driver, with more skill than most of the F1 field put together, but recently he seems to have completely abandoned his brilliant racing nous for some desperately ill-timed moves. And in that one disastrous move on Button he very nearly ended all Mclaren’s race strategy at a stroke.

hamilton claims in post race interviews he was well inside buttons car, but onboard replays show he is a liar, he only got to have his front wheels in distance with buttons back wheels, after button made one legitimate blocking move. hamilton had no more room on the track abut decided to keep trying to make the pass on the grass and caused the accident.

I have a question. To Whoever was doing the graph “McLaren drivers‚Äô lap times throughout the race”, Lewis is indicated by red color and Jenson by very similar red/orange – shouldn’t it be done in white color maybe for both drivers on white background? Hm? Then we could see exactly who is who!
I love F1Fanatic various graphs, they are excellent and give a lot of information, I’m always impressed, but very often drivers’ performance is depicted in very similar color so it’s almost impossible to distinguish which line represents which driver.

I think the colors are similar so they can be identified as a team in the overall laptime graphs.

This chart is useless for comparing team mate laptimes anyway. That’s obviously not what it is meant to show. Even if the laptime differs as much as a full second the dot is only 2 pixels moved. That’s pretty much imperceptible.

If you want to compare team mates you should look at their time differential over the race.

As far as the VMM performance, it’s interesting that the only two times Vettel has been defeated, has been by McLaren, and then only by really virtuouso performances, one each from their drivers, to snatch it away in the closing stages. If you look at Spain, Vettel was under a similar furious late-race assault from Hamilton. This is what it takes to stop Vettel, and even so, you only relegate him to second.

In all the races Vettel has not won though he has had a massive performance deficit. In China his tyres were gone relative to Lewis’ and in Canada he didn’t have the heat in the tyres that Jenson did and was more than a second slower.

I thought China and Canada were great races and I really enjoyed them and liked to see the Mclaren’s win, but I’d like to see someone beat Vettel when he and his opponent are on the same strategy.

vettel was on the same strategy as button, his tyres had the same life, he didnt push as hard as he needed too at the end and when button caught him he didnt have enough track knowledge and slid wide.

i love how you are saying the only reason vettel was beat in china and canada was because of the performance defect, when vettel has been comanding the season because of the performance defect of the red bull to the rest of the feild

Should there be an ‚Äús‚ÄĚ on ‚Äúcollision‚ÄĚ? Just saying, there were two

Collisions with non-Macca are not worth mentioning, at least when escaping unscathed, no matter how much damage you do to the other guy. Let them rot.

Jenson might as well have installed a machine gun in his car, demolish everybody else and call it a win. And Charlie Withing would have been happy with that, no doubt. Michibata has good reason to be jealous.

This is a bit pathetic to be honest – you compare two racing incidents to someone setting out to wreck other drivers’ cars! You may have a point though; perhaps every win by a driver involved in an incident with another car during the race should be removed – that seems totally logical and not the whining of someone unhappy with a race result.

ALonso took himself out as much as anything. He was behind into the corner, people seem to be over looking that, Ok he braked really late to get back in front but there was nowhere for either of them to go by that point.

if FA believed Jenson took him out then he would be very vocal about it….and is it not obvious that not only was JB following the dry racing line but also his visual acuity was imapired due to the conditions….LH is an aggressive driver..it’s what makes him great…but also why he only has 1 WDC

Let’s not get carried away here, I’ve yet to see jenson beat Lewis without Lewis having problems. Jenson just had a very fortunate race. IMO button closed the door on Lewis on purpose and expected him to back off but it was too late. If I was Lewis from now on the gloves would be off!!

Monaco seemed like extreme bad luck and trying too hard on an impossible circuit for overtaking, but Canada was a danger sign. I’d say Hamilton’s problem isn’t his tendency to go for ‘any potential gap,’ which he’s always had, but his race concentration and therefore his judgment about what is a potential gap. He has to respect his own racing intuition more than anything else – and by that I don’t mean doing whatever his ‘instinct’ dictates, but making sure his split-second calculations aren’t being distracted by off-track (but in the hospitality suite) celeb nonsense. He’s got what, 5 to 7 years at the top left, if lucky? Plenty of time to win those other championships he says he wants if he has a level head, no time at all if he’s more concerned about trying to impress Ice-T, NBA stars or whoever. You can see why the McLaren team might be more enthusiastic about Button winning, it makes them more part of it. The Senna comparisons are wearing thin: Senna was pure concentration on race days, Hamilton is now anything but. If that continues, he won’t win another WDC, ever. He has to cut the media showboating and get some discipline fast. The new management is already looking a very, very bad decision.

Agree with you both there David BR and BasCB. Especially regarding the concentration aspect. Hamilton’s got all the talent a driver could hope for, he’s not lacking in his speed and aggression but I think he should have gotten a penalty for having an entourage in his garage. It looked tacky!!

My first impression of Hamilton, was that the fame attached with the sport would get to his head. I think his dad kept him grounded, disciplined and focused for a couple of years, but off late Lewis seems more concerned with running his mouth to the press, and comparing himself with the legends of the sport. Right now, Jenson actually leads him on points, a situation a driver with his talent shouldn’t be in. He better get his act together.

I agree, which is why having a celeb agent as a close advisor of any kind is a huge mistake. Someone has to focus Hamilton on F1 – whether his dad, himself or a manager with real understanding of a what a professional sportsman needs to succeed. It seems like Hamilton believes he can switch between these different frames of mind at will, the recent evidence suggests otherwise.

Not only is Button ahead of him on points, he’s also all round currently a much better driver. He’s marginally slower in quali and at the start of the race, but very little over an entire race distance, which Hamilton is now finding too much of a challenge apparently (to complete a race). He’s also overtaking far better than Hamilton. Though nothing to be ashamed of, Button is a far better racer than credited, that should hurt Lewis’s pride. Carry on like he is, and McLaren will be backing Button for the WDC in 4 or 5 races with Hamilton out of it. And he’ll only have his vacuous celeb nonsense to blame, not the team or car, since the car looks like it will be the best on the grid for the second half of the season.

i couldn’t agree more…and his aggression doesn’t suit the pirelli tyres…jenson can preserve tyres as can seb and alonso but hamilton’s gung-ho attitude is going to cost him in future races where tyre wear plays a bigger part…if ferrari can get their act together alonso can make a surge…if not the championship will be a two horse race by time monza has arrived

It was a nice gesture that Hamilton refused to speak to the UK media after the race as he wanted Button to get the limelight (as he should). I think that somewhere in there there’s a truly wonderful champion, lets hope it gets out sooner rather than when it’s too late

Well presuming you’re the same Damon as above, ‘ramming drivers off the road’ would be gloves off, I guess?! Seriously though, does Hamilton seem concentrated enough on his racing just now? Beating a ‘superior’ opponent (Vettel in the RBR) requires guile and patience. He’s well capable of that, as Canada and other races this year have shown, but he looked like he’d totally lost any common sense at Canada. Doubly frustrating since some of Hamilton’s best racing has been in wet weather. Schumacher’s pass on Massa and Koba simultaneously was a sublime lesson in how the best drivers show their full talent in the rain.

Button was the fastest man on the track in the final period of both Monaco and now Canada.

Is this because he is legendarily gentle on his boots?

Or does this mean McLaren now has the fastest car and if Hamilton (normally a squidge quicker then Jenson) was about he would be be the man to beat?

Discuss without reference to BrawnGP or Belgium 08.

Either way, Champion drive by Button, just brilliant stuff. He is no proxy world Champion that is for sure. In the final five laps of the race he drove past Schumacher, Webber and Vettel. How many drivers can say that?!

Certainly made up for getting up at 3AM and still be in front of the tv at 8!!

So what are you suggesting? Red Bull is still the fastest car in the race? Because when you include Spain and China that is now four races in a row where McLarens were all over their tails at the end of the race?

Fastest Lap can sometimes be a furphy, As I recall at the end of the Monaco race when fuel was lowest, Webber had some clear track and Button was stuck behind a Ferrari and Red Bull.

Well, what can I say other than wow! Well done Jenson Button. You drove an absolute blinder. I reckon he could be just as well remembered for that race as his entire championship year, classic stuff. His pace down the straight was formidable when he had the wing dropped.

Nothing more than a racing incident between him and Hamilton and I think both drivers, particularly Hamilton, behaved very well afterwards. No crazy gestures like we had from Vettel at Istanbul last year…I think a ‘What was he doing?!’ sufficed from JB.

Hamilton is one of the fairest defending drivers on the grid. If the roles were reversed I truly believe he would have given button room. I wonder call that a pass by Schumacher at all as they both made mistakes and he simply drove straight pass them. Button just seems to get the luck, Hamilton none. I think vettel is out of reach he as too much of a lead

And vettel is nowhere near out of sight. 25 ish points in old money. With another 12 tours to go? Hamilton who is approx 30 old points behind can make that up, Button and Webber have a good chance of that. Vettel has never been the hunted driver at the sharp end of the champoinship, we have yet to see how he copes with that.